Death of Hercules

Jean-Pierre Cuzin attributed the painting to Deshays in 1988. A drawing auctioned at the Hôtel Droust on 23/01/1980 (lot 65) is of very similar composition with the inscription ''Deschais, Roma 1762. / Hercule sur le bucher, assisté par Philoctetes''. Alastair Laing of The National Trust commented that ''the 'Roma', rather than the '1762' (when he had long been back in France), of the inscription is more likely to be accurate, so that it would have been a tyro work, before his style and abilities were fully formed''. The story of the Death of Hercules starts when Hercules and his wife Deianeira crossed a river. Hercules swam across leaving Deianeira in the hands of the centaur Nassus. Nassus tried to rape Deianeira so Hercules killed him with an arrow poisoned by the blood of the Hydra. The dying Nassus, knowing that his blood was poisoned, tricked Deianeira by telling her of a love potion which could be made from his blood. Later Hercules took a mistress, Iole, so Deianeira made a shirt for Hercules and stained it with Nassus's blood in order to win back his love. Hercules wore the shirt only to be struck down with pain. He killed the sender of the cloak and returned to kill Deianeira who committed suicide. He could no longer stand the pain and resorted to his death building a funeral pyre on Mount Oeta. He laid on the pyre on a lionskin cloak and asked his friends, one of whom was Philoctetes, to light the pyre. A letter from John Deffett Francis to Sir John Williams dated September 27th 1898 (NLW) states ''We had a clearing out here [Fine Art Department Swansea Public Library] yesterday especially of my old first curator room - and to my delight found 5 oil pictures which I had quite forgoten all remembrance of, till I saw them [......] 4. A Sketch by Gericault for his large picture of ''the Death of Hercules'' in the Louvre''